1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to selecting project portfolios.
2. Description of the Related Art
Businesses may have opportunities to perform several projects. On many occasions, the businesses may have opportunities to perform more potential projects than the businesses have resources to accomplish all the potential projects. Project portfolio selection can have a profound affect on the final value that a project portfolio can deliver.
Project portfolio selection can be a complicated process. Traditionally, many factors have to be considered in a project portfolio selection process. In addition, uncertainty has to be accounted for with respect to all the factors. For example, for a project heavily dependent on energy, energy prices have to be estimated for the duration of the project. Estimated energy prices have an associated uncertainty. The associated uncertainty may be a factor in determining if the project is successful or not. Typically, the associated uncertainty is based on a probability.
Probabilities used to predict success or failure of the potential projects may be difficult to estimate and may be highly subjective. Highly subjective probabilities may lead to selecting projects that fail.
Methods known in the art of portfolio selection typically require information about three aspects of projects—investment, return, and risk. The three aspects may be used as input into a portfolio selection algorithm. One of the methods creates a portfolio by maximizing the expected return on an investment for a given level of risk. Another method minimizes the risk for a given level of expected return. These methods include an efficient frontier method of Markowitz, a capital asset pricing model of Sharpe, and extensions of these methods.
One problem with applying these methods to project portfolio selection is that project risks are difficult to estimate. While financial securities may have historical data that can be used to estimate risks, typically, there is little or no historical data available to estimate project risks. Also, when historical data may be available from similar projects, the historical data may be questionable for use in calculating project risks because the projects are not the same. These methods may fail without accurate risk calculations.
What are needed are a method and a system for selecting a project portfolio.